COOKING HIS OWN GOOSE

The rout on Rao's home turf makes him vulnerable because he has no one to blame but himself. Instead of sharing decision-making, he concentrated all power in his own hands.

advertisement

ZAFAR AGHA

December 31, 1994

ISSUE DATE: December 31, 1994

UPDATED: December 31, 1994 00:00 IST

FOUR years of living dangerously hadn't shaken P.V. Narasimha Rao's imperturbable demeanour. But as the scale of the Congress (I)'s defeat in last fortnight's assembly elections in three states sank in, the prime minister quickly lost his campaign smile. And he may stand to lose a lot more. Rao would willingly put the maximum possible distance between himself and the losses in Sikkim, Karnataka and particularly his home state, Andhra Pradesh. But he cannot.

He sealed off all escape routes when he made the mistake of linking his personal prestige with these elections. The result: he was trapped when it became clear that he had been thrown out of his own backyard. He alone was responsible for the electorate rejecting him in the south. And it was a particularly painful blow for India's first prime minister from the south, for he owes his position to the support from southern Congress(I) MPs, who constitute an overwhelming majority in the Congress(I) Parliamentary Party.

ALL EXITS SEALED

THE LACK OF ANY ESCAPE ROUTE OR any possibility of sharing the blame for the defeat is not to do merely with Rao's rash campaign statements suggesting that the result would be a referendum on his leadership. It goes beyond that. Rao was essentially a consensus choice for the party leadership after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination midway through the 1991 general elections. He was expected to share power with the party's other heavyweights both at the Centre and in the states and involve them in crucial decision-making processes.

But such expectations were soon belied as Rao concentrated all power in his hands. He is the first party president to dispense with the Congress (I) parliamentary board, which decides the party's poll candidates. This has given him unlimited powers not only to select candidates for elections but even to nominate the Pradesh Congress (I) Committee (pcc-i) chiefs.

In the Government, Rao has, for over two years, kept several portfolios with himself, including the key defence and industry ministries. In an era of liberalisation, all major investment proposals from abroad are cleared by his principal secretary, A.N. Verma who heads the Foreign Investment Promotion Board in the Prime Minister's Office (pmo). Says one minister: "Rao's pmo wields more power than even Indira Gandhi's."

Such concentration of power can be fatal, as Rao is undoubtedly learning; having himself devised the entire poll strategy for Andhra Pradesh, right from distributing tickets to running a personalised campaign. Candidates were picked from an advance list prepared by his media adviser, P.V.R.K. Prasad and Security Secretary Theriyan. Both officers from the Andhra cadre, they used their old connections to gather information about prospective candidates and coordinated with former chief minister Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy in making the choices.

To compound matters, Rao hiked the stakes and made the elections a virtual referendum on his Government. In an effort to evoke Telugu pride to win votes in Andhra Pradesh, he marketed himself as the Telugu bidda (son). "The whole world is watching these elections. Your bidda's pride is at stake'', was his appeal during his first campaign tour of the state.

That Rao was assiduously digging his own electoral grave was apparent to his critics, for they had anticipated what he evidently hadn't: that the south, from where he drew his strength, could also be his nemesis. Arjun Singh, the challenger who has lost two bouts, in fact, laid a trap for him. At an ad hoc meeting to select candidates for Andhra Pradesh, he requested that the decision be left to Rao, saying "it is the Congress(I) tradition to leave the leader's home state to him". Rao evidently did not anticipate Singh's motives and now the human resources development minister and the growing band of dissidents may well be sharpening their knives.

BUFFETED ALL ROUND

AT THE AICC (I) SESSIONS IN Tirupati and Surajkund, Rao was able to snuff out the dissidents' challenge, thanks to the overwhelming backing of Congress(I) MPs, a vast chunk of whom come from the south. But now, with two crucial states lost, Rao is aware that these MPs are not likely to be swayed any more by regional sentiments.

There is no doubt that the stunning defeat in Andhra Pradesh and the drubbing in Karnataka will prompt rethinking by MPs from these two states. Together they provide 94 of the 266 Congress (I) MPs in the Lok Sabha and with Rao's election strategy proving to be a disaster, they cannot be faulted for harbouring doubts about their chances of being re-elected under his leadership.

It was, therefore, a gross understatement when a shaken Rao muttered, "it is indeed a storm", to Vilas Muttemwar, a party MP from Maharashtra, as the results trickled in on December 9. The seasoned politician that he is, he also knows that his leadership is going to be buffeted as never before.

That the storm was gathering with devastating ferocity became clear the day after the results were declared, when a meeting of the cpp executive witnessed two unusual events. When Home Minister S.B. Chavan, who chaired the meeting, read out the resolution reiterating faith in Rao and compared the debacle in the south to the one the party suffered in 1977 under Indira Gandhi, a Rajya Sabha MP from Ma-dhya Pradesh, Suresh Pachauri, protested: "Nobody can compare himself to Indiraji." Sensing the belligerence of some members, Rao's confidant and Minister of State in the pmo Bhuvnesh Chaturvedi agreed to delete the reference to 1977.

At the same meeting, 10 Janpath loyalist S.S. Ahluwalia took to task Parliamentary Affairs Minister V.C. Shukla for briefing opposition leaders on the progress of the Bofors case and confirming that Ottavio Quattrocchi, a close friend of Sonia Gandhi, was one of the appellants before the Swiss court. In the sheer timing of this move, Gandhi family loyalists saw a pre-emptive effort by Rao to ward off possible moves by them after the elections. At the meeting of the Congress Working Committee (cwc) the same day, when the leadership was about to go through the motions of expressing faith in Rao, Arjun Singh questioned the very need for the resolution. "Why do we need to do this every time?" asked Singh, drawing full support from N.D. Tiwari and Rajesh Pilot, among others.

DISSIDENTS CLOSE IN

IT WAS NOT THE FIRST TIME THAT Rao had been the target of attack from within. But rarely, if ever, had the party president been singled out at a high-level party forum. Even in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition, the cwc had not criticised him. Faced with what seemed like the first signs of a revolt, the Rao camp was nervous.

The debacle has understandably put a question mark over his stewardship. In his zeal to show that, like Indira and Rajiv, he too is a vote-catcher, Rao had taken upon himself the task of leading the party to victory. But his electoral forays have been a string of failures, starting with the north last December when party candidates did not even want his posters. With the party battered on his home turf, his authority- both as Congress(I) president and prime minister-has been considerably eroded. And Congressmen are already dreading the prospect of a defeated Rao leading them into electoral battle-in Maharashtra, Orissa, Bihar, Gujarat and Arunachal Pradesh-in just three months' time.

The defeat also prompts a debate over the fate of his Government's economic reforms programme. It had become an issue in the elections since the subsidised rice scheme was Telugu Desam Party (tdp) supremo N.T. Rama Rao's main election plank. The Congress(I) reacted late and failed miserably to counter tdp propaganda. Perhaps where Rao erred was that he did not effectively emphasise the 'human face' of the reforms package. In other words, that the trickle-down effect would bring benefits to the villages in the long run. Said Arjun Singh: "I am not opposed to reforms. We should have emphasised the human side of reforms.

Such sentiments are likely to be increasingly heard in party forums as the Congress(I) gears up to face the electorate, first in the five states early next year and then in the Lok Sabha polls a year hence. NTR's landslide victory is proof that nothing attracts votes like populism, something that a party committed to reforms cannot indulge in unchecked. Rao has already stated that he is not for competitive populism. "I can promise rice at Rs 1.50 per kg to win votes. But it will push the economy into bankruptcy once again," he told the cwc on December 10.

The prime minister can draw comfort from the fact that his reforms package has its supporters. But at the same time, he cannot ignore the apprehensions of his MPs who are calling for a slow-down and demanding subsidy hikes in the next budget. A tough balancing act that demands that Rao should go ahead with reforms to send the 'right' signals to the people and yet should slow down their pace.

ALL this means that Rao will have to ease his stranglehold on both the party and the Government, share power and grant more freedom to regional leaders and authority to pcc(i) chiefs. But he shows no sign of having read the writing on the wall. His managers are already talking about cabinet reshuffles and major shake-ups in the party, tactics that have been resorted to before and have not worked. As such, promises like these are hardly likely to satisfy anyone. The prime minister's detractors point out that such concessions will not hurt Rao's ego much since even Indira Gandhi, the most powerful party chief in recent times, had resorted to this in the wake of the Congress (I) rout in the 1967 elections.

But there is more than Rao's ego that is a matter of worry. For the first time in his tenure, there are serious doubts about his health. The pmo was quick to scotch a newspaper report which quoted an unidentified source as saying that Rao is suffering from a serious heart ailment. The report followed an incident during the election campaign when the prime minister fainted owing to sheer exhaustion. But the firm denial notwithstanding, his detractors are bound to use such reports to question his capacity to continue in office. When they do so is open to speculation. Not, perhaps, right now. But certainly if Rao leads the Congress (I) to another electoral Waterloo early next year.

Get real-time alerts and all the news on your phone with the all-new India Today app. Download from